


To Feel Safe

by LaughingFreak



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3848497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingFreak/pseuds/LaughingFreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuzu wants to feel safe and she finds that in Atsuro.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Feel Safe

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first Devil Survivor fanfic and it’s not slash. Amazing. Anyways, the reason for the author’s note is because I gotta let you know that I wrote this before I was done with the actual game. I was only on the 4th Day when I wrote this. It was in my head, so I thought I’d chance it and just keep it vague enough so people won’t jump down my throat. I took liberties, so if you can’t deal with that then oh well.

 

The first day was the hardest. Everything happened so fast and nothing was ever fully explained and she was so scared. Though she voiced her fears she felt that no one took her seriously and only thought she was whining. Yuzu felt she was acting appropriately, something akin to how a normal person would react to the situation. No one would act like a completely calm person that was totally comfortable with what was going on. But when she looked at her friends they seemed worried too yet also very curious.  
  
Yuzu was not against letting her fears be known and expressing caution as they went further into the ordeal. There was nothing wrong with that.

 

*

 

The demons that they all summoned disappeared after they defeated their last enemy run in for the night. Yuzu breathed a sigh of relief as she sagged down onto the concrete, COMP in hand. Atsuro used his forearm to wipe the sweat from hi brows. Kazuya stood with his eyes closed with his head tilted to the sky, breathing at regulated intervals to calm himself.  
  
“We should probably go get some sleep. We don’t want to get caught out at night,” Yuzu said as she looked to her friends.  
  
Atsuro nodded and put his COMP in his messenger bag. “Yeah, you’re right. We better get going.”  
  
Kazuya agreed silently with a nod then held a hand out to Yuzu, a small smile on his lips. She took his hand with a tired smile as he helped her to her feet. “Let’s go,” he ordered tiredly.  
  
She dusted off her skirt as the bluenette turned to Atsuro and spoke to him quietly before beginning to walk off back to the park they were staying at.  
  
The three walked and talked quietly about the day’s events, tired and ready for a night of rest. Yuzu slowed her pace and walked a foot or so behind the boys. She watched them quietly and thought about the last few days. Just the other day she was living life like a normal teenage girl: worrying about school, going out and hanging with friends, boys, the newest fashion trend. Things that didn’t deal with demons and people dying and a scary and uncertain near future.  
  
Now here she was just trying to survive and make her days of life longer than the previous and against the odds of what was predicted by a mysterious email sent every morning to her COMP and having contracts with demons to make the aforementioned happen. It was a such a change, one that she wasn’t fond of and couldn’t wait to get rid of. It did bring things she took for granted into perspective, though.  
  
More than anything, though, she missed being safe.  
  
“Hey, Yoohoo, you’re awfully quiet,” said Atsuro, falling back into step with her. Kazuya stayed ahead of the two at the pace he was going.  
  
“Don’t call me that,” she said tiredly, more out of instinct and habit than anything else.  
  
He furrowed his brows at her tone. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?” he asked.  
  
“I’m fine. It’s just…” Yuzu bit her bottom lip. “I’m tired.”  
  
“Well, we did have long day and we had some pretty tough battles too,” he reasoned.  
  
She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s not what I meant.”  
  
Realizing her meaning his face grew solemn. “Oh…”  
  
“I’m tired of fighting and demons and of this lockdown.” She sighed. “I just want to feel safe again.”  
  
“I understand how you feel,” her murmured. “But we got to stay strong if we’re going to live. We’ll make it, we have to, and then we’ll be home. Safe again.”  
  
“Yeah…” she agreed.  
  
The two walked on in silence for a few moments, Kazuya turning his head enough to see if the other two were still doing alright before his attention went to what was before him. He left to the two to themselves for the most part to give them some semblance of privacy, something that the three of them have had little of since the lockdown started.  
  
“Hey, Yuzu?” Atsuro suddenly said, voice a little above a whisper.  
  
Yuzu gave him her attention, looking at the computer genius. He neer used her real name, it was always ‘Yoohoo’. “Yeah?”  
  
“I’m sorry about being insensitive to your feelings on the first day. I wasn’t trying to be mean.” He looked down at the ground sheepishly, hand gripping the strap of his bag tightly.  
  
She gave a tiny smile. “It’s okay. You weren’t terrible and I may have overreacted from the stress. There was so much tension and unanswered questions, not that it’s gotten any better, but I’m doing better now.”  
  
He looked at her and smiled.  
  
She blushed and looked away.

 

*

 

Day three of the lockdown had people starting to get violent and anxious. Their little group wasn’t much better, but it was for a completely different reason than the rest of the public. The Laplace Mail told them of an immortal that would be coming to destroy and they only had until this evening to live. Needless to say, the girl was scared, but she was also determined to beat the prediction as the day went by.  
  
The three of them, including their new member Keisuke, spent the day fighting and gathering information on how to defeat an immortal demon and the Devil’s Fuge and still looking for a way out. They helped others, Midori being one of them, only to find out that she couldn’t behave responsibly with the power of the COMP and had some fantastical ideas of dealing justice and saving lives without any regards to the situation or people’s opinions. Yuzu knew the young girl was going to be a headache if she didn’t do things smartly, she had a feeling about that.  
  
But her biggest worry, as selfish as it may be, was to defeat Beldr and survive to live another day. That’s all she wanted.  
  
And luckily, just that happened.  
  
The day was long and a lot went on, but they survived at the end of the day. They fought Beldr and won, the Devil’s Fuge working being true, and saved Haru again from death. There were many battle in between and they won those too. When it got started getting dark out they discussed further plans and made their way back to their makeshift ‘camp’ in the park to rest up for the night.  
  
She didn’t say anything to anyone else, but she was worried about Kazuya. He seemed different after the battle with Beldr. She just tried to shake it off and not think about it as much. Besides, she had enough to worry about.  
  
Everyone laid out on the ground in the same formation they have every night previously since the lockdown started, her in the middle between Kazuya and Atsuro while Keisuke was on the other side of Kazuya. There was a pickup of the wind and she shivered from the chill. There wasn’t much she could do about it, at least she had the two boys blocking it a little if it come from either of those directions.  
  
She missed her bed.  
  
“You cold, Yoohoo?” Atsuro asked in a whisper.  
  
Her back was to him, but she nodded and said, “Yeah”  
  
Atsuro shifted closer and she could feel his body heat radiating from him he was so close. She flushed as her eyes darted to the bluenette in front of her and at the brown hair of Keisuke on the other side. They seemed to be asleep. She hoped they were asleep.  
  
“I-I can keep you warm. If you want…” Atsuro offered shyly, his breath warming her nearly bare shoulder as he spoke.  
  
Yuzu’s face was beyond red, it was inflamed like fire. She could put a tomato to shame. A boy has never said something like that to her before and she wasn’t sure how she felt about something as intimate like he was suggesting would be entirely appropriate with their two friends next to them and outside where everybody could see. Yet alone it came from the computer geek next to her, it wasn’t something you’d expect from him.  
  
It was chilly out, though, and she was tired of being uncomfortable because of because of it.  
  
And she only had three days to live by what her Death Clock says, so why not?  
  
“O-Okay…” she stammered in agreement, quietly.  
  
An arm wrapped around her waist and she felt her friend’s body flush against her body. Her heart beat rapidly at the intimacy. When he spoke again she felt his breath on her ear.  
  
“Here, use my arm as a pillow,” he offered.  
  
Yuzu bit her lip and lifted her head, placing it gently on his arm.  
  
They were quiet after they positioned themselves comfortably, both of them getting used to something that was so out of the norm for them. Kind of like how everything else around them was these past few days. It really fit the situation, doing something that for them was out of the ordinary but also relatively normal to a point.  
  
When they both finally got to sleep it was out of pure exhaustion.  
  
Come to find out, much to their chagrin, them being wrapped up in each other’s arms was going to be a nightly routine for the coming days.

 

*

 

After that night Yuzu found herself being held as she slept every night they were in the lockdown. No one made comments about it, at least not since that first morning the two woke up. Kazuya teased them a couple times that morning, but after the Laplace Mail came in it was all forgotten and it was time to get started with the real issues of the day.  
  
Her and Atsuro began to stick close together on and off the battlefield, making sure they stuck together and had each other’s backs while just sticking together outside of it to just to have some comfort. As the days went by they all became more and more focused on what was going on with the lockdown and demons and the battle between the Bels. When there was some quiet time, which was mostly at night when they all curled up for sleep and Yuzu was wrapped up in Atsuro’s arms, they talked about little things that were in their everyday lives before and themselves.  
  
By the time the lockdown ended they had grown very close.  
  
Things after the lockdown went back to as normal as it could be after something like that. Yuzu was back in school and hanging out with her friends again. She was back to homework and chores and living life normally. Atsuro lived his life and she lived hers and they talked little to each other since that was how it was before. They didn’t want to think about that week by seeing each other so often, it would bring the reminders. She was back to what was normally deemed safe.  
  
But in reality she wasn’t much safer than she was during the lockdown. During the lockdown she saw things of what the human desire can do. She saw people turn on others even when they were helping them, stealing and breaking into stores to gather supplies, people dying. The dark side of the human race showed itself to her that week and it was something she knew was just as scary as the demons she had fought and summoned. Humans were just as dangerous and demons were not the only ones she had to watch out for anymore.  
  
Knowing all this made her feel different than her friends and classmates that weren’t directly involved in the lockdown, that week of horror. It was a week imbedded into her memory and one she couldn’t really talk to anyone about. She couldn’t tell anyone that she spent most of her nights since then having nightmares of it that would wake her up in the middle of the night. She couldn’t tell them that she was a demon tamer and that she fought to save lives and all of Tokyo. She couldn’t tell them that she felt normal and that everything was alright when it wasn’t and she wasn’t. She couldn’t tell them that she missed sleeping in Atsuro’s arms at and that it comforted her. And she couldn’t tell them how scared she was of what she knew was out there while everybody else wasn’t aware of them.  
  
No one knew and she couldn’t bring herself to tell her mom or closest friends she’s known for years how traumatized she was.  
  
Sometimes she would think of Atsuro on sleepless nights and remember what it was like to lay with him and talk as she fell asleep during their time together.  
  
She missed being close to him.

 

*

 

It was night her mom was working the late shift at work that she got the text message. It was one of those nights that she couldn’t sleep. The dreams, nightmares, were making it impossible to sleep without seeing the pain and fear and death that were all too common for her to see when her eyes shut and her guard was down. Instead she was laid on her bed listening to a late night radio talk show. It was something she found was distracting enough without showing that she was awake if her mom was home and kept her mind occupied while background enough so that if she wanted to go to sleep she easily could.  
  
Furrowing her brows at the sudden ping of an incoming text she checked the message.  
  
_From: Kihara Atsuro_  
 _To: Tanikawa Yuzu_  
 _Can you let me in? I’m on your doorstep._  
  
Shocked and confused, Yuzu re-read the message to see if she read something wrong or was going crazy. After the third time she found that she didn’t read it wrong and wasn’t going crazy yet. She hurried off the bed and ran to the window to see if it was true. And it was. Atsuro stood on her doorstep messing with the rim of his hat nervously.  
  
She opened the door and pulled him inside, locking it back up quickly.He stumbled but caught himself before he could fall on his face.  
  
Before he even had the chance to speak she started in on him. “Do you know what time it is? What if my mom was home and the neighbors saw you? What are you even doing here?”  
  
He blinked at the rapid paced questions. “Whoa, Yoohoo, calm down.”  
  
Though she was happy to see him she put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes on him, ignoring the loud thumping of her heart. “Well? Answer me!”  
  
Atsuro straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck. When he finally answered his voice was soft. “I figured you were having the same issues I am. The memory of it and feeling like a different person.”  
  
Yuzu relaxed and calmed down. “Atsuro, it’s the middle of the night. This couldn’t wait until morning?” Even after she said that she knew she was happy that he chose to come to her now instead of the morning. If she knew where he lived she would’ve eventually went to him. She blinked owlishly. “Wait. How’d you know where I lived?”  
  
He blushed. “I couldn’t sleep and I, kind of, hooked into the school computer system since we never got the chance to exchange addresses. Sorry.”  
  
She snorted lightly and rolled her eyes. “Next time just message me. Getting my address like that is what stalkers do and that’s kind of creepy.”  
  
“Yeah, alright. I kind of forgot about having your number, I was sort of out of it.”  
  
He didn’t have to explain by what he meant by ‘out of it’, she already knew. She had the same experience earlier that night. Nightmares.  
  
She took his hands in hers; blushing and biting her lip, and asked self-consciously, “Keep me company?”  
  
Atsuro smiled softly and ran his thumbs over her knuckles. “Yeah, anytime. I’ve got you.”  
  
Yuzu stepped closer and stood on her toes, then whispered, “I know, thank you.” She pecked him on the lips, not for the first time but definitely something that hadn’t happened since the lockdown.  
  
Now she felt safer.


End file.
